Organic ant killer?

I have a couple ant hills (I know where one is) in my upper bed. I was playing live and let live, I hate killing anything, but they crossed the line and are ranching bugs on my plants; so, I need to get rid of them. It's my ornamental bed so I could use nasty stuff, but I prefer not to. Does anyone have suggestions on how to get rid of them without resorting to nasty pesticides?

You could try boiling water. I must admit I have never been able to get rid of ants even with the nasty stuff. They just move. As long as they are not in my veggie garden they are welcome to stay. I can't have them biting the little one's feet.

I used to blend up a lemon with vinegar and coffee grounds. It used to slow them down a lot, and did get some to move away. You might try a tobacco blend; grab an old tobacco plant, blend it up, let it soak in water for a couple of days, then pour that nasty stuff on them. Then again, that's actually a pesticide isn't it? I also used to discourage fire ants by encouraging more friendly ants by feeding them, but yours are not fire ants (I hope!). Fire ants don't get along with other ants and if there were enough friendly ants, they would hold them off. There had to be a lot of them though. In one of the ant battles one time, I noticed a kill rate average of 5 little friendly ants per a single fire ant. Brutal.

They sell ant baits with boric acid as the active--I'm not sure if it's technically considered organic or not, but it's safe and nontoxic to anything except the ants so you could definitely use it in the spirit of organic gardening. Diatomaceous earth might work as well, just make sure you get the food grade kind rather than the one for pool filters.

You might get a result by sprinkling cinnamon around the plants. Apparently, it messes with the ants ability to find its way back to a place, so if you use the cinnamon, the ants can't find their way back to the area you sprinkled around.

I used to sprinkle cinnamon around an old house that I live in before and never had ants in the house.

rtl850nomore – I’ll try that.

marwood0 – I had made up some of that and worried that it would kill off beneficial bugs, so I decided not to use it. I use to use it on aphids when I had rose plants. I got so &!$$@% at the ants a couple days ago that I used it anyways and it didn’t seem to phase them.

No their not harmful to people at all, just my plants.

ecrane3 – We got some nasty stuff to deal with some ants that were coming up from cracks in the driveway; it worked well, so I have that option.

What is Diatomaceous?

Hastur – I’ll try that.

Diatomaceous earth is made from the ground up shells of little microscopic critters--it has sharp little edges and cuts up bugs that crawl over it.

Ok, that's pretty cool.

I eventually resorted to using the bait crystals (Amdro maybe?) . Before the lemon and vinegar I tried boiling water, orange peels, dish soap, even rubbing alchohol. They didn't work very well, with the minor exception of the rubbing alchohol. The little pesticide crystals worked very well if I sprinkled enough on the mound.

marwood0 did Amdro work in that it got rid of them? I too used to use Amdro but the ants did not go away, they just moved away. I am strictly organic now so don't use Amdro anymore.

I don't care if they move away as long as they aren't in my yard.

Yah Amdro did get rid of my fire ants when I lived in Texas. I had to sprinkle it on liberally to get the whole mound, otherwise it would just slow them down and a few weeks later they'd recover. Some mounds I had to sprinkle two or three times if I didn't use enough or if it rained a lot. That only worked because I didn't have many ants; I remember other places in Texas where they covered almost every square inch of everything - from the tree tops to floating aquatic vegetation. There was no killing them then, just got used to being stung all the time. At least they kept the rodent population down. They also killed some of my newborn bunnies!

Timely thread. I was just researching this. See article and follow up threads at http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/923/
Our 6" of rain has brought up several mounds seemingly overnight as they try to escape the moisture. I'm going to try the modified Texas Two Step as outlined at www.walterreeves.com: see below.
"Texas Two-Step" method to use organic insecticides:

Spread a bait containing the bacterial insecticide spinosad (Green Light Fire Ant Control, Bulls Eye, Justice).

Then drench the mound with a product containing orange oil (Citrex, Safer Fire Ant Killer, Orange Guard, etc).

That's how I got my phobia of having ants on me; I've conquered it to a certain extent. We lived in CA during the 6 year drought. The ants were taking over. I stepped into an ant hill and thought I'd never get them all off.

I thought this might be of use if others were having issues with ants http://www.mrsfixit.com/Fixits/FixitDetails.asp?id=83

Try grits!

I heard about this method several years ago.....it specifically recommended sprinkling instant grits on the fire ant mound....the ants eat the grits, and then (thankfully) expire. And they don't come back.

The grits must be applied in dry weather.....no problem here in TX........and it may take a second application.

I have had great success with this method....and it's ORGANIC!!

I've somewhat changed my attitude toward the Argentine ants (the ones Grandma used to call "piss ants", and which have always driven me just crazy!!) since we had some termite tubes show up this spring.

I was pouring boiling water on the termite tubes. As the larvae and hatchlings were coming out, I had two allies: the California phoebe birds (who were snatching the termites up as fast as they came out of the nests) and the Argentine ants, who were attacking the termites the phoebes missed, and dragging them into their nests.

By the time the inspector came out later in the week, there was not a sign of a termite or nest anywhere on our property. Much as the ants annoy me, I'll take them any day and twice on Sunday over termites!!!

As long as they weren't killing my plants...

I'm a horticulture student and have just found that ants have come in and made a huge nest in a large pot in the greenhouse. We try to be organic in there, but I did sprinkle Amdro on the floor. I took the huge pot outside so how do I rid the pot of the ants? What can I sprinkle inside the greenhouse, cinnamon? Oh, has anyone used a 'bug vacuum' and what did you think of it. Could I use that for ants?

You could try boric acid baits, that's a relatively safe option. I'm sure the bug vacuum would work on the ants you can see crawling around but it won't do anything for all the ones that are still inside the pot. The other thing you can do if they're just in the one pot and if you've got a big enough bucket is submerge it in a bucket of water and they'll all come crawling out.

I had some luck with Cinnamon, but I used it to keep ants off a plant, I'm not sure it would work to move them out of a pot.

Zhinu--or anyone else reading this--just wanted to add a word of caution. Please be very careful using nicotine. It is a very effective pesticide for a lot of problems. That's because it is HIGHLY poisonous. I don't know how well it works against ants in particular, but it is non-selective and will kill other beneficial bugs and earthworms. It's also very toxic to humans and can hurt YOU. Handle with care.

We have serious fire ant problems here. We use beneficial nematodes, which work on both fire ants and termites. They're a bit expensive compared to chemicals, but then most organic controls are. :( I'm not sure how effective they are for other types of ants, but it's worth checking into. We also use spinosad. I applied spinosad as a mosquito control, and it didn't seem to help much with that problem. But, between the spinosad and nematodes, I've seen very few ants of any kind for a couple of years now.

pbtxlady - did you spray the spinosad? I have some kind of sprinkle bait with spinosad in it. I'm sure I need to apply it again since I still see the ants. Do you order beneficial nematodes online? I've never seen them in a store around here.

Yes, I sprayed the spinosad with a hose-end sprayer. Just did it once since it didn't seem to do much for my skeeter problem.

I buy my nematodes locally. The best I've found are at Rohde's in Garland, but it looks like they don't ship nematodes. Last year I got them at Calloway's/Cornelius, which would work for you, except did I read somewhere that they're closing all the Cornelius stores in Houston? :(

Gardens Alive! sells them online, but they don't really describe them as a lawn product, and fire ants are not on their target list. Since they come in different concentrations, you'd probably do better buying them locally, so you can read the label and ask questions.

Great information. I've never looked for nematodes, but my commitment to an organic solution is much stronger than it used to be! I'll do some calling around to see if I can find some.

I'd better check to see if Cornelius is closing! Wouldn't that be a great sale? I was in their out west location about a month ago, and they were gearing up for Christmas big time. It didn't look like a struggling business, but you never know.

Well, maybe my memory is faulty! I hope so.

They'd sure have a bang-up sale to clear it all out! Memory... what's that??

LOL! I dunno--I've forgotten.